Translated from the Russian and Edited by S.S. Koteliansky
I
One of Dostoevsky’s early letters has recently been published in Russia. It gives quite a clear picture of his state of mind during the first years of his literary activity.
The internet is filled with gossip, hucksterism, schlock, back-biting, and valueless aggregation about the publishing industry. Poets & Writers magazine is a diamond in the junk.
When an American reads the history of his country from the founding of Jamestown to the firing on Fort Sumter, he is moving in a world that is frequently foreign to him. The accidents of place, or even the more intimate ones of heredity...
A warlike, various, and a tragical age is best to write of, but worst to write in, said Abraham Cowley. When a people looks back on such an age in its own history, another question is raised as it evokes in memory those wars, the turbulent...
Consider the difference between James Cooper and James Fenimore Cooper; David Wallace and David Foster Wallace; or Jorge Luis Borges and Jorge Borges. Who would want to go down in history as Jorge Borges?
